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Bach's schematic, as it appears on the page

LaripS.com, © Bradley Lehman, 2005-8, all rights reserved.
All musical/historical analysis here on the LaripS.com web site is the personal opinion of the author,
as a researcher of historical temperaments and a performer of Bach's music.

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Examples! Harpsichord and organ recordings for purchase, released January 4th 2006. #1002 "A Joy Forever" (organ) and #1003 "Playing from Bach's fancy" (harpsichord)
Updated! Download free sample recordings of keyboard music played in Bach's temperament (excerpts from the above albums)
Read the Early Music article "Bach's Extraordinary Temperament: Our Rosetta Stone" part 1, or purchase a subscription to the journal
Supplementary materials at Oxford's site as noted on page 18 of the printed article (not really "supplementary", but integral parts of the article!)...download these five files from the outline page
Early Music article "Bach's Extraordinary Temperament: Our Rosetta Stone" part 2, Oxford University Press. Includes a link to its own supplementary section.
Updated! Errata and clarifications for "Bach's extraordinary temperament: Our Rosetta Stone"
Outlines of the complete Early Music article, and of the Clavichord International article
New! Spring/summer 2006, the article "Bach's Art of Temperament" further explains this temperament from several additional practical angles.
Other articles about this tuning
A simple, informal speech introducing this tuning and the relevant issues around it (i.e. a lecture inspired by the style of Richard Feynman)....
Frequently asked questions (FAQ) part 1, part 2, and part 3
The background and process of the discovery

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Practical "twang" instructions, explaining the basic concept here for people who are accustomed to thinking of temperament as beat-counting. Comma-splitting is listening for interval quality, not numerical beats!
Practical instructions to set up Bach's tuning by ear, along with other methods contemporary with it [Beginning] [Intermediate] [Expert]
Electronic-tuner instructions [Main version] [Vocal-music version]
A geometrical technique for quick tuning to set up any regular series of consistent fifths: the core C-G-D-A-E and/or F-C-G-D-A for any temperaments (including Bach's) that have them
Mathematical analysis of some of the musical results in this tuning's layout: cent charts, comma splits, tone and semitone measurements, etc.
Updated! Other "Bach" temperaments from 1966 to present, surveyed
Updated! A roster of the temperament's usage (adventures) in concerts, broadcasts, and recordings
Updated! A clarification about the temperament's version for Bach's vocal music
"Ordinary" and "Extraordinary" temperament
Updated! CPE Bach's use of this same temperament
Properties of regular or "meantone" temperaments
Epigrams about Bach's tuning
Some little test pieces for the Affekts of the keys
Graph of the enharmonic handling and scale structure
The fifths and major thirds are explained using Brombaugh's "Temperament Units" and Sorge's 18th century model of schismas: a mini-lesson here on the basic mathematics of keyboard temperaments
Comparisons with other temperaments
The more complex enharmonic issues to be solved in keyboard tuning are expressible in a cube puzzle layout
Updated! "Temperament-killer" test pieces from Bach's repertoire, to confirm or weed out any proposed "Bach" temperaments empirically
This tuning is installed in the Opus 41 organ by Taylor & Boody at the Goshen College Music Center, Goshen Indiana USA; also in several others in Europe and the USA. Roster of its use...
New! A digest of postings to HPSCHD-L clarifying research details and answering questions

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